ADOLESCENT DEVIANT-BEHAVIOR - MULTIPLE CONTINGENCY TABLE ANALYSES OF OVERLAP BETWEEN BEHAVIORS

This was a study of 1,093 adolescents from six public high schools des igned to test a deviance syndrome perspective by examining how much ov erlap there is between certain deviant behaviors, and by investigating whether the same theoretical elements account for variance in those b ehaviors. A log-linear analysis of suicide attempts, alcohol use, use of marijuana, and number of sexual partners indicated a significant in teraction (or overlap) between the latter three forms of deviant behav ior. However, an examination of the configuration of data according to deviant behaviors indicated that the actual numerical overlap was les s impressive than the statistical significance or syndrome argument wo uld imply. The present study also provided logistic and OLS regression analyses of many elements of social control theory. Those analyses re vealed that few of the theoretical factors were consistent predictors of the various forms of problem behavior. Social work implications of the findings were discussed.